In the News

Professor Casey Weissman-Vermeulen Discusses Funding Cuts to CNY Fair Housing

Professor Casey Weissman-Vermeulen, Director of the Housing Clinic, spoke with the Daily Orange about local housing advocate CNY Fair Housing and its future as federal grants and funding are diminished for education initiatives.

CNY Fair Housing is a local nonprofit organization that receives funding through grants from the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. It responds to tenant or renter discrimination cases by conducting investigations and taking legal action when necessary. But it now faces the elimination of grant funding for its education and outreach efforts, which are being challenged in court.

CNY Fair Housing’s mission, Weissman-Vermeulen said, extends beyond legal enforcement. He also said the organization also works to raise awareness about how housing discrimination impacts individual families and the greater community.

“Issues of discrimination and then isolating folks to areas of concentrated poverty, lead to all kinds of problems that we all sort of collectively pay for in terms of folks not being able to access jobs and being upwardly economically mobile or perhaps engaging in crime or non-legal economic activity,” Weissman-Vermeulen, a former attorney for CNY Fair Housing, said.

Professor Shubha Ghosh Discusses Google Antitrust Case Remedies

Crandall Melvin Professor Shubha Ghosh spoke with the National News Desk about possible remedies in the Google antitrust ruling.

“The courts generally, and I don’t see a change in this, tend to like contractual remedies like trying to make sure contracts are not being used in a way that is anti-competitive, and that’s more their bailiwick,” said Ghosh, Director of the Syracuse Intellectual Property Law Institute. “That’s something they may be more comfortable with in terms of just not having the kind of exclusivity arrangements that Google might have had with Apple, in terms of just trying to open up like the data.”

Dean Terence Lau Speaks with NBC News on How Automotive Tariffs Will Affect Consumers

Dean Terence Lau L’98 recently spoke with NBC News on how new automotive tariffs will impact consumers. One anticipated way is for auto insurance premiums to increase.

It will cost insurance companies more to replace damaged car parts that are subject to tariffs. “When you get into an accident, your car insurance company is the one that’s going to be buying those parts to repair your vehicle,” said Lau, who was previously a trade lawyer for Ford Motor Co. “Many products are imported, and so I expect that we will see some upward pressure on car insurance premiums.”

For consumers, Lau advised: “Don’t panic. Because when you panic, you make bad decisions.”

Professor Emeritus William C. Banks on the Transfer of the Roosevelt Reservation to the Military to designate as “National Defense Areas”

Professor Emeritus William C. Banks spoke with AZ Central/The Arizona Republic for the story, “What Trump’s executive order on the Roosevelt Reservation means at the Arizona border.”

“Symbolically, it puts the military right in the center of immigration enforcement,” said Banks, who has studied and written about the use of the military in the U.S. interior.

“When (the military) has been deployed in recent years, including in the Bush and Obama (administration) … they’ve been undertaking activities that we would not call law enforcement. The worry, historically, about putting soldiers in the position of cops is that they’re not trained to do that. Their orientation is entirely different — they’re trained as warfighters, not as law enforcers,” he said.

Professor Gregory Germain Provides Legal Analysis in the Article “Could Donald Trump Deport Americans?”

Professor Gregory Germain spoke with Newsweek for the story “Could Donald Trump Deport Americans?” The article examines the legal issues surrounding how the Trump administration could strip American citizens of their citizenship and deport them to prisons in El Salvador.

Germain said that the U.S can deport naturalized, foreign-born U.S. citizens. “Under existing law, the government can revoke the naturalization of citizens if they made misrepresentations or omissions during their naturalization process. There is a presumption that members of a communist party or a terrorist organization during the 5 years after naturalization misrepresented or omitted information.”

“Once their naturalization is revoked, they can be deported.”

He said there would first have to be court hearings. Germain said that revoking the citizenship of someone born in the U.S. is a far more difficult process. “Revoking citizenship of natural-born citizens, as opposed to naturalized citizens, is more uncertain,” he said.

“Trump’s new executive order denying citizenship to children born here of illegal aliens only applies prospectively [in the future] so far.”

“It is conceivable that he or Congress could attempt to make it retroactive to people born here before the new executive order, although it is far from clear what the courts would ultimately say about that,” he said.

Professor Jenny Breen Reacts to Law Firms Being Targeted by President Trump

Professor Jenny Breen spoke with Newsday for the article “Trump Aims at Law Firms That

Opposed Him: Experts: Orders Designed To Tamp Down Dissent.”

“It’s very clear that he’s trying to raise the price of dissent, and he’s trying to make it really hard for people to challenge what the administration is doing,” said Breen.

The full article may be behind a paywall.

Professor Emeritus William C. Banks on U.S. Acquiring Greenland “Clashes with Denmark and the EU Would be Legion”

Professor of Law Emeritus William C. Banks spoke with Newsweek for the story “Greenland as 51st state: What U.S. taking over Arctic island could look like”.

Banks, who specializes in national security law, called the idea of Greenland becoming a U.S. state “almost surely a pipe dream of Trump.” “Greenland would have to request statehood, itself a ridiculously remote prospect. Clashes with Denmark and the EU would be legion, and if the U.S. attempted to take Greenland by force, it would be waging an unlawful war.”

“Hypothetically,” for Greenland to become a state, Banks says, “Congress would have to enact a statute admitting Greenland (to the U.S.) and the president would then sign the bill, making it a law and adding Greenland. If the people and government of Greenland/Denmark remain opposed, it is hard to see how governance as a state could work.”

Vice Dean Keith Bybee Speaks with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Radio on His Book “How Civility Works”

Vice Dean Keith Bybee appeared on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC Radio) program Future Tense, speaking about his book “How Civility Works.”  The program examines how society functions in an increasingly uncivil world.

Bybee says “When we think about law as something that is authoritatively determined according to a specified process, so we know something is a law for people in the community to obey not because I just said it or you just said it but because duly elected officials have followed the process for passing that law and has been promulgated and enforced according to preestablished rules, we have institutions in place called courts of law that tell us what to do when there is a dispute over what a law means.

We lack all that, typically, in the case of civility. That lack of governing and regulating institutions in the case of good manners has led people on occasion to make civility more like law and determine codes of conduct that can be enforced by authoritative institutions.”

Vice Dean’s segment starts at 2:34.

Professor Shubha Ghosh Comments on the Potential Oracle/TikTok Deal’s Impact on Oracle Shareholders

Crandall Melvin Professor of Law Shubha Ghosh spoke with Politico on the potential Oracle/TikTok deal in the story “Trump’s TikTok-Oracle deal could break the law — but nobody can stop him”.

Oracle shareholders may have standing to sue if the deal negatively affects the value of Oracle stock. However, even concerned shareholders may be unable to stop a deal between Oracle and TikTok from moving forward. Ghosh said shareholder lawsuits typically take place “after the fact,” triggering only once a deal is agreed to and later goes sideways.

Professor Gregory Germain Sees Room for SCOTUS to Rule in President Trump’s Favor in Birthright Citizenship Challenge

Professor Gregory Germain spoke with Newsweek for an assessment of President Trump’s court cases that challenge the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of citizenship to anyone born in the United States.

Germain said that Trump’s lawyers will have to focus on the second phrase of the citizenship clause, arguing that children born in the US to illegal aliens are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States.

“That seems like a question that will ultimately have to be decided by the Supreme Court. Trump can argue that the phrase about being ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ must have meaning and should be read as a limitation on birthright citizenship,” Germain told Newsweek.

“The Supreme Court will have to decide whether children of illegal or temporary residents qualify, and whether an interpretation by executive order rather than statute is effective.”